


What We Must

by coltuonome



Category: Le Fantôme de l'Opéra | Phantom of the Opera & Related Fandoms
Genre: Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Happy Ending, Kind of angsty, Love never dies, M/M, Slow Burn, Suicide, There’s a lottt of buildup, christine dies in the prologue, kind of hard to make two characters who hate each other love each other, kind of lnd compliant but also not
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-24
Updated: 2020-10-10
Packaged: 2021-03-04 21:08:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25482922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coltuonome/pseuds/coltuonome
Summary: The vicomte has lost his wife and subsequently everything else. A recluse hiding within the rooms of his dead father’s house, he resigns himself to alcohol and does his best to blunt the residual pain. Months of numbness pass before he thinks that the opera ghost might like to hear the news of Christine’s death. He’s not the only one who thinks so: he receives a note from Madame Giry that, just like him, the opera ghost is wasting away, dying below the streets of Paris. Giry tasks the vicomte with retrieving the dying ghost to save his life, but the vicomte has other plans: to put the wretched creature out of its misery once and for all.It does get happy.
Relationships: Raoul de Chagny/Erik | Phantom of the Opera
Comments: 4
Kudos: 30





	1. Prologue

So afraid was he to dip a finger into the past that it was not until his second month of mourning that he thought there might be someone else who had heard the news. Her death was not on his hands, no, and it was not on the ghost's, either, but a small part of him — the human part, he liked to think — wondered if the ghost was still alive, if he mourned as fervently as now the viscomte did. 

She had told him, before she leapt from the bridge, that it had not been the ghost to drive her to madness, but the actions of the viscomte. Still, it had been the viscomte's clammy hand on hers that tried to bring her to safety, his arm which had dislocated her shoulder, his hand which shook and bled from the force of her fingernails and of her gaze as she fell. Christine fell with the Palais Garnier. Whatever remained of the ghost's caves now lay forever buried, flooded, closed off to sunlight. Was he down there, still alive, or did the wreckage shatter his spine the way the viscomte always wanted to, did he lay gasping her name as he breathed his last? 

Still, the viscomte sees her falling, when he dreams, when his body lays prostrate yet his mind betrays him. He would have followed her, if he'd had any courage. He would have followed her, if he hadn't remembered the ghost.


	2. Obfuscate

It was not that he withdrew from the world, but that the world withdrew from him. The months stacked and still he roamed the same halls he frequented in his youth. The manor was not so full now: Philippe, dead; Mother, dead; Father, dead... Christine, dead. It was just him, under the overcast sky; just the little vicomte standing at the open window; just the young boy knee deep in ocean water, red scarf around his neck too tight, too tight.

His friends were no longer his friends. There was no opera to support, no shows to see. Carlotta had returned to Italy; the managers, to their accounting positions. And as for Madame Giry and her wiry little daughter, they had disappeared with the burning of the Garnier. (In his nightmares sometimes, he sees Christine, falling so slowly, so slowly, like a feather floating to the floor, while the fire consumes her, while little Megara and helpless Antionette reach for her, their faces furnaces, their bodies burning.)

It had been six months.

The grief within him scraped away at his stomach, his lungs, the inside of his skull. Not for himself, not necessarily, but for her, always for Christine, you wept for her and always ended up weeping with her. Every time, his lips caught on the word _fair_ : _It wasn't fair,_ he cried to himself some nights, the sentiment always straining against him, none of it made any sense. Not the persistent, constant struggle of Christine's life to stay afloat, and most certainly not the life of the ghost. In this whole affair, perhaps it had been the ghost to whom the vicomte had most been sympathetic. And — it was true that, had he and the ghost traded places, he could not swear that he would not have taken the same actions.

He sat by the open window, nursing, as was his recent and most unfortunate habit, a half-full glass of whiskey, straight from America. So deep was he in the throes of drunkenness that he almost did not notice Francois next to him, calling, "Monsieur? Monsieur?"

In his gloved hand he held a letter on a tray. "For you. Just arrived, Monsieur."

The vicomte set his glass down and smoothed his black tie. He still wore mourning dress, even long after the customary period had expired, but it could not be said whether he mourned his wife, or himself.

The letter was remarkably nondescript. White stationary, black script, a woman's handwriting. _Tonight,_ it read. _Garnier. Before the moon rises._

When he was younger, the vicomte would have said the note was some sort of threat upon his life — come tonight before the moon rises and atone for your sins. But tonight, his mind pleasantly dulled and filed down, he could not fathom that there was anyone still alive who could have it out for him in a mortal way. He had made many people mad, but no one had heard Christine's last words—that secret was safe with him. And like all facets of high Parisian drama, the vicomte's sins were eclipsed by someone else's not a month later. Besides, he had removed himself from society so wholly and completely that where he was before there remained only a silent scab that was not worth removing to anyone with half a brain. So it was more with curiosity than fury that the vicomte regarded the note, not bothering to question where Francois had pulled it from nor from whom it had come.

Instead he tilted his head up to the one person who remained from his childhood and said, "What time tonight does the moon rise?"

Francois said something about how he would find out, how his almanac was open already and he was on his way. He was nothing more than a set of receding footsteps to the vicomte soon, who thought to himself that he should stop drinking if he were to take up this unknown caller at moonrise. Willing himself resolve, he set the glass down upon the windowsill and sat in the darkness, mulling over his immediate future until at some point he fell asleep.

Francois woke him when it was much darker and the sun had slipped from the sky. "Monsieur, it's six-thirty in the evening. The moon will rise in half an hour."

The vicomte glanced furtively down toward the note resting on the junction of his thumb and forefinger, as if to remind himself of his calling. "Then I think I must away," he said, throwing his hands upon his knees to push himself upright.

"Monsieur?" said Francois, startled by the vicomte's sudden movement.

"I'm off to the Palaise Garnier," said the vicomte, suddenly stricken with a sense that he was watching his life as an outsider. He felt a smarting desire to point out to himself that the Garnier had burned down, or maybe to Francois, and he understood that to leave a silence after that sentence was to denounce himself as drunk past the point of no return. Still, he could not muster the strength to say it, so he deemed his resulting silent pause an act of God. "I'll hopefully be back before midnight. If not please send a carriage my way." If Francois said anything to the vicomte's retreating back, it went unheard.

The night was cold and unsteady on the vicomte's weary feet, and he wrapped his English scarf tighter around his collarbone. He had no qualms about his midnight appointment, no anxiety, although even he chalked that up to the drinks. Who knew who or what awaited him at the burned foundation of the Garnier? More importantly, who cared? The vicomte knew not if he would care if a crook stole from him or robbed his life. He lived for alcohol and alcohol lived in him.

The last dregs of sunlight vanished from the pale blue sky as he wound his way around the streets of Paris, and he saw the lamp-lighters weave through the shadows, peering at him curiously in the cold air. They did not know his face, but they knew his clothes enough to rightly suspect he shouldn't be out in this cold, in this dark, in this neighborhood.

At last he alighted upon the hulking foundational blocks that marked the ruins of the Garnier. The sky was dark save for the starlight and the flame-colored inverse shadows cast by lamps dotted around the square. It was too dark to make out the individual features of the character who stood ramrod straight near the Garnier's corner stone, but light enough that the vicomte had a suspicion who it was based on their outerwear and the staff clutched in their right hand. The vicomte's own hand clenched in its pocket, and he brought it up to smooth the brim of his hat before plunging it back in and picking up his pace.

"I thought you'd died," he said to Madame Giry; "We thought you'd all died."

To be true, she did look worse for wear; a great ropey burn scar wound up from her neck across her face to her right ear, and the hand that grasped her staff was scabbed and cracked. She pursed her lips and stared at the vicomte with obvious discontent and disdain. "I know what was thought," she said, and the voice that emerged from her throat was as damaged as its body. "And I know what happened. It must have taken a lot of strength to show your face in society, Monsieur le Vicomte, after what you did to your city, and to your wife."

Where once he would have felt rage, the vicomte felt only heavy resignation; he, too, understood her feelings. "Why have you come, Giry?" he asked instead of replying.

If it were possible to have stood straighter, Giry would have with ease. "I have come to collect a debt from you, Monsieur le Vicomte. The changes you brought to your own life by burning down the Palaise Garnier have wreaked havoc on my life as well, as I'm sure you can see."

Where once he would have fought back, the vicomte felt only mild discomfort and the slightest twinge of shame for the connection of his name to that hopeless incident. "My name was never implicated," he said, "and I had nothing to do with it."

"Be that as it may, you still owe me a great deal, Monsieur. It was I who brought you to the Phantom's lair, though I knew what might happen. And now: my opera house is in ruins, my adopted daughter dead, and my first-born in tatters with no prospects ahead of her. And, Monsieur, there is still one loose thread to be snipped, one final act of retribution. Can you guess what that might be?"

The little vicomte shook his head no, suddenly feeling exhausted.

Giry drew near, looking into the Vicomte's face not as an old friend but as an equal adversary, as someone who had nothing to lose anymore and held as much of a stake in revenge as he did. "For all your contemptible actions, for all the buildings whose burnings you sanctioned, you still failed at your primary task. The phantom of the opera still lives."

"I did not burn the Garnier," the vicomte said, as if choosing to ignore Giry's final statement. "I did not sanction the burning of the Garnier. These accusations are baseless and fraudulent. I have no idea who burned the Garnier."

"The phantom of the opera still lives, Monsieur de Chagny," she repeated, voice calm less because of inherent patience and more because of the slow moving fury behind her eyes.

It wasn't as though the little vicomte hadn't seen this news coming. He wasn't blindsided or swept off his feet. The creature had cheated death so many times that one more was less of an insult and more of an expectation, at this point. So, like with everything, the vicomte took this news with a set of pursed lips and a resigned sigh. There was nothing to be done about it now.

But then why was Giry here?

"You want me to kill the beast," the vicomte realized.

"No," Giry snapped, and gripped her staff with both hands now. "No, I want you to bring him to me. He's badly wounded, Monsieur, and there are people in this city who want him dead more than you. As a payment of your debt to me, help me pay my debt to him. Bring him to me, here, within the next week, or he will surely die."

"How could you still seek to help him?" demanded the vicomte, both hands flung from his pockets. "How could you, after all he's done to you — to your family — to your position and standing — and yet you still help him?"

"You have no perception of my situation," Giry countered, coolly. "You have no realization of the past year of my life, nor the debts I've incurred with the man who lurks beneath the streets of Paris. I suggest you do as I ask, Monsieur, as you always have; you do not want to lose the one ally you have left in this country. Keep your hand at the level of your eye."

"You are no ally of mine. I thought you were dead up until ten minutes ago."

"Don't you wish your situation were different, Monsieur?"

The vicomte paused at that, because of course he did. "I wish Christine were still here, and you cannot change that fact."

"If she were here, she would not be happy."

And wasn't that the truth.

"I can give you what I can give the phantom, Raoul de Chagny. I can give you what you need to start over, like I did once, like he did once. But only if you do this for me."

Confusion permeated the vicomte's bones. What did she mean by start over? How different of a life was she suggesting? Did it matter? "My life will not start over because I brought the phantom to you," he responded. "You cannot return Christine to me, just as you can't return the Garnier to the way things once were."

"I never said I would return Madame Daaé to you," snarled Giry, and it still smarted to hear Christine referred to as his Madame. "I can help you find a new life, away from here, away from the ruins of the life you once knew."

That gave the vicomte pause, and made him reconsider turning the request down. "How?"

"I know how to fake death, Monsieur; that's why you can see me standing in front of you here today. I know how to fake death, and I know how to purchase ship tickets for an anonymous man."

Fury stung the inside of the vicomte's skull, and he clenched his gloved fists harder. "You would have me leave France? My country, my homeland?"

Giry was silent, and her point was clear: _There was nothing for him here anymore._ Whatever had marked France the vicomte's homeland, besides his title, was gone: either burned with the Garnier or landed at death's doorjamb. She tilted her head to ask, _Would you not leave were you given the chance?_

The vicomte, not willing to compromise so soon after being asked to retrieve his worst enemy alive, opened his throat to continue, but a different question came out. "Where did you go, when you faked your death?"

"Italy," Giry responded after a hesitation. "Found a job at a local _teatro_ and rebuilt some semblance of a life. It's possible, Monsieur. You can give life meaning again."

"It seems like you've forgotten what you asked of me."

"No, Monsieur le vicomte, I know exactly what I've asked of you. I wish the creature dead. I do. But my constitution, and my upbringing, have taught me never to renege on a debt."

"...What did he do for you?"

"That's not your business to ask, is it, Monsieur?"

The vicomte stiffened, still used to the parlour etiquette of the life he had left behind... _wanted_ to leave behind. "No, forgive me."

Giry inhaled, nostrils flaring as she gazed towards the ground. "The fact of the matter is, Monsieur le vicomte, I owe Erik — I owe _the phantom_ — a life. I owe him a promise."

"What was it you called him?" interrupted the vicomte.

"And he is in grave danger in this city. Graver even than yourself. There are men who want to kill both of you — surely you must know that."

"I've been made aware," said the vicomte through gritted teeth, remembering the countless accusations and threats amounted in the newspapers of Paris, and how they had continued and continued to grow in fervor.

"The Phantom, too, is haunted by ghosts of his past, and these, too, are ghosts with guns and knives and terrible, terrible rage."

"I wish I could join them."

"No, you don't," said Giry. "I don't think you have it in you to kill anymore."

The vicomte let that go.

"The phantom will die if we do not act," continued Giry, "and not only are you in danger of murder if you do not leave this city with him, but I will have both your deaths on my conscious for the rest of my life."

"Hold on," said the vicomte, wanting to make sure he had heard her correctly, "did you say I would be leaving with him? With that — with that beast?"

"That's a worst-case plan," Giry smoothed over. "In any case, Monsieur, we can bring light back to your life yet. You just must leave before you are killed in the street by an old member of the mob. And I will not permit you to leave before you have brought the phantom, alive and breathing, to my doorstep on Rue de Alexandre."

"Why do you not go yourself?"

"Why, Monsieur," scoffed Giry, "I appreciate the flattery, but even I cannot carry a grown man through the streets of Paris."

Carry? The vicomte narrowed his eyes, ready for the conversation to conclude so he could turn the offer down in its entirety.

"The phantom lurks beneath the streets, I'm sure I don't need to tell you that. I know he's beneath the Rue de Wilbraham, or at least he was when I last dropped food and water down the manhole. He is in dire straits, Monsieur, so I doubt he's moved far from that position." If it were polite for Giry to have hope in her eyes, there it was.

The vicomte sighed. Furious with Giry and himself, he could not justify his refusal to decry her as mad and go about his night. "I'll do what I can," he said, "but if the creature attacks, I have a right to self-defense."

"That you do," replied Giry with a tight little smile, "and I'll be expecting you both dead or alive by next Sunday at flat 4 on the Rue de Alexandre."

Uneasily, they both shook hands, and the vicomte turned heavily on his heel.

He refused to let himself wonder about a life beyond Paris, because aside from the Navy, he'd never left it. Who was he, without Paris, without the opera? Who could he be?

Francois took his coat at the door, peppering him with questions the vicomte did not have the strength to answer. He marched up to his quarters and withdrew a bottle of scotch from his bedside table: drown the thoughts, drown the opportunity. This was him, full-fleshed and intricate. This was who he was and who he would always be.

The vicomte fell asleep dreaming of the seaside on a summer day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for the wait on this work! Still chugging through, school stuff is pretty busy right now, as are the preparations for Nano 2020 :)

**Author's Note:**

> Very short prologue, other chapters will be much longer


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